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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Thanks to a link over at george's place, there is a nifty little widget that indicates the reading level it takes to read your blog.

**UPDATE**Proudly, we achieved "postgrad" status!

I attribute our vaguely-advanced reading level to the amount of times the words "beer," "drunk," and "sorority girls" appear in this blog.

Actually, I can't think of one single time any of the contributors here ever included "sorority girls" in a post. However, one intrepid contributor did indeed include the phrase "fresh cod, gay weddings, and Ted Kennedy's urine" in a post. All in the same sentence. That's how we roll here.

Yeah, Mr. F. You totally got robbed. Your last several posts have been cogent, well-constructed missives. Our last several posts have included all of the aforemention phrases. Yet somehow, we get Post gard."

Look at it this way, Furious: everything you needed to know you learned in Kindergarten.

I am going to take the contrarian view from the above comments. If you think about it, this blog contains some pretty heavy language with a discussion of many important global events and public policy.

There are enough German and European beer references to make it look like we are bi-lingual. Such as: “eisbock”, “Hacker-Pschorr”, “Kölsch,” “Dubel”, “Tripel,”.Plus phrases like: “Mayor of Munich who declares ‘O'zapft is!’(Bavarian: ‘It’s tapped!’).”

A quick scan also indicates high-minded phrases such as:"…Ottoman Empire in WWI, a genocide. Turkish foreign policy advisor Egeman Bagis has responded by saying…”Or:“Suffice it to say, Ahmadinejad is a dickhead…”I think the “Ahmadinejad” reference, not the “dickhead” part, raised the reading level at least one year.

We discuss hybrid cars enough to make a quick automated scan by the Blog Readability Test assume that not only are we writing at post-grad levels, but this is a blog actually authored by college professors. (They are the ones buying hybrids aren’t they?)

We have a regular discussion of politics, with many references to world-wide events: “Australia endured its worst drought on record. Hail storms across Europe damaged crops…”

Don’t forget, we have a pretty regular debate on the merits of tax policy:“Speaking of disingenuous, the Small Business Association of Michigan proclaimed their support earlier this year for a Fair Tax. This is an 8 or 9% tax…”

Yes, we sprinkle in various references to asses, tits and of course all things beer, but if we took ourselves so seriously while discussing the many heavy topics we debate, we would in fact be college professors and not the everyday Joes that our 1.3 million readers enjoy everyday.